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Flashback: the day a van crashed into an iconic Stroud shop

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Mike and Joy Goodenough ran Inprint on Stroud High Street for 40 years before closing the business in 2018. Here, Mike recalls the memorable day when a South West Gas van careered into the much-loved book shop.

It’s hard to imagine now but in 1982 Stroud High Street was still open to two-way traffic. March 18th was a Thursday and as this was the olden days, it was also half-day closing, so the town was fairly quiet.

I was across the road with my assistant, working on a clearance above Marriott’s Newsagents (now Antics), when there was an enormous crash outside and the sound of breaking glass. ‘That’s going to be expensive,’ I said to her as we moved to the front window, to discover a gas van wrapped around the corner of my shop window. A truck had hit the van and pushed it down the street.

gas van in shop window 2 | Flashback: the day a van crashed into an iconic Stroud shop
The stricken van Pic: Joe Salt

Back at the shop a small crowd of gawpers had gathered. It was chaos – traffic still trying to use the glass-strewn road in both directions; people getting far too close to the shards of glass hanging from the windows; my landlady becoming more stressed and animated by the minute, and everyone thinking I knew what was going on!

When the police arrived things calmed down and I was able to take a proper look at the single, thin cast iron column that supports the whole front of the building. As you can see from the photograph, the van’s radiator had absorbed most of the impact a few inches before making contact with it. Although I couldn’t see any signs of movement, it was a tense time awaiting the structural engineer’s confirmation. In the meantime, I cleared up and waited for the glaziers to arrive to take out the shattered glass and board up. A very long day but it looked like we had avoided disaster.

We were boarded up for about a week, so to cheer ourselves up and entertain the customers we staged a re-enactment of the blitz. I used to supply a lot of material for reminiscence therapy, W W II newspapers and magazines, but also props like gas masks; so we had lots to play with.

So in the end, the building was safe, the insurance claims were paid in full, we had a bit of fun, and enjoyed a rather better trading week than we might otherwise have had.

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